Start the New Year with a Fresh New Look

Start the New Year with a Fresh New Look

For many businesses, the start of a new year is a time to take inventory of your assets — including your digital assets. So, here’s a question for you:

How long has it been since you redesigned your website?

Some business owners are quite surprised to realize how much time has gone by. It may feel like you just launched that sleek new website yesterday, but before you know it, four years have gone by. That’s an eternity by internet standards.
If this describes you, now is a great time to give your website a fresh new look.
Best practices and visual trends for websites change and evolve quickly. It’s not just about the look and feel of your site. It’s also about the way your site is optimized for search engines, the loading speed of pages, and the way your website fulfills user actions and expectations.
EXAMPLE: ‘Before & After’ of Trufast.com, a website we revamped in 2018.
All of these dynamics are constantly shifting. Before you can blink, that razor-edge website you set up a few years ago now barely cuts through butter, metaphorically speaking. It’s slow, it’s dated, and it’s drawing less traffic than before — even though you’ve done nothing to change it. But that’s just the point: You’ve done nothing to change it. Your website needs to keep pace.

7 signs it’s time for a redesign

How do you know when it’s time to redesign your site? Let’s look at a few key indicators:

1. Your site looks dated.

The fact is, online aesthetics change, sometimes year to year. What looked sleek and stylish in 2015 may look outmoded today.

2. Your site loads more slowly than before.

This often happens because of software updates on the web. If your site doesn’t update as well, it takes longer for the information to translate.

By this, we mean the site adjusts automatically to fit different size screens (e.g., tablets and smartphones). So many people are accessing the web through mobile devices that the search engines now penalize websites that aren’t responsive.

Many people (both with and without disabilities) use special interfaces and assistive technologies to access the web. If your content or design don’t play nice with these technologies, not only are you risking not reaching these people, but search engines may also penalize you.

5. You’re getting less traffic and generating fewer leads.

This frequently happens due to changes in SEO best practices that have made your site less relevant over time.

6. Your competitors have all updated their websites.

Seriously — this is a key sign that you need to keep up.

7. It’s been more than three years.

Taking into account the speed at which the internet evolves and even certain tax benefits, we recommend a full website redesign about once every 36 months to ensure your site stays up to date, and that digital assets are giving you the maximum return for your investment.